Token waterfall photo from the approach.
The rain had actually trailed off to a light drizzle by the time I got out of the car. We walked up the Perry Creek trail (the fourth time for me, last fall doing my Mt Dickerman north face climb, with Heidi and Karen, and with Max in the winter snow, and now.) Across the valley on the flanks of Mt. Stilaguamish, long waterfalls hang down. One of the best pieces of photographic advice I’ve ever gotten is from Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light, on not hand-holding when the shutter speed is less than the inverse of the focal length. (In other words, if you're using a 50mm lens, you can't expect good handheld results at less than 1/60th of a second.) Before I read that, I would have tried to take photos of the waterfalls at 150mm, at about 1/30 second, and get annoyed when they didn’t turn out, thinking that I should be able to hold it still. This all comes from my memory of a friend back in high school saying that another friend who was a photographer on the yearbook staff could hold a camera still for half a second, and I figuring, if he can, so can I.
But, if Galen Rowell can’t, well, I shouldn’t expect myself to. I hunkered down on rocks to steady my camera and took a couple of shots of the waterfalls. Max waited fairly patiently; he didn’t go racing off the way he has in the past. He loves the snow, though, when we get up into it he’s racing around, falling down on one side, then the other, to rub his face in it, with a look of pure joy.
The suns streams in through the bright blue gashes torn in the grey fabric of the sky, but the gashes heal over quickly without a scar. Three or four times the sky is mostly blue for 10-15 minutes, but it closes in again. In those clear times, the mountains melt out of the clouds in a spectacular show of light: you see spots of sunlight on the snow, but obscured by the cloud between us, that melts away and the vista is perfectly clear, impossibly clear, clearer than real, looking like a laser-printed laminated photo placemat. Then vanishes.
We came up to the ridge and saw the mountain, looking like a castle with battlements and walls. Really a beautiful thing to see. I could see the route Beckey recommends, around to the right, spiraling up the mountain to ascend to the summit from the north. On the flanks of the mountain we come across a couple of guys who’ve turned back because they can’t find the trail. We press on. Max seems taken by the rock, which forms handly ledges for him to hop up on and gaze dramatically out like Rin Tin Tin.
We’re on snow (or I am, anyhow) almost the entire way, except for 50’ or so of steep crumbly rock, where I try hard to keep from trampling the heather. Shortly below the summit, what looks (correctly) to be about 30’ below it, Max does one of his "cut in front of me and stand there" manuevers, which indicate that he’s tired. So, a few minutes from ultimate success, we stop and eat. He’s got graham crackers, I’ve got my carrots and sandwiches that Heidi fixed for me. Max only needs ten minutes and he’s as ready as if he’d just gotten out of the car.
At the summit the weather is pretty crummy, but you can see the winding path of the Skagit (I think) far below. It’s really a pretty steep mountain. I went to take a picture of Max on the summit, and the batteries died. Prepared for this since the last time on Rainier, I dug into my pack and pulled out the spare set of batteries, and put them in. Another shot, and again the viewfinder goes black. Shit, these batteries are flat too, too long bumping around in my pocket.
So, I pack everything up and head down the mountain. On the rocky stretch I had to stop and put my ice axe on the pack because I felt like I needed both hands, and heard a faint high-pitched whine coming from somewhere. It wasn’t the cell phone, it was the camera. The auto-timer switch was somehow flipped, and when I switched it back, the shutter returned. So, what the hell, I turned around and Max and I summitted a second time for the photo ops. I got what I hope will be a pretty good shot of him, summit register tube and all.
Purple Mountain Saxifrage, growing on the summit rocks.
It's interesting how scrambling on rock helps you to appreciate just how fragile the human body is, and how easily a slip or a fall and a bounce could destroy what normally feels like a completely solid mass of bone, muscle and flesh.
It was a fun climb, a fun mountain. Now I want to dig back through my photos of the area and look for it. I should have had a good view of it from the top of Big Four, for instance.
On the way back down, we ran into several people, including a woman with a Weimeraner. Unfortunately, Max took exception to that dog, for reasons that I don't understand, and they went at it. I separated them, and leashed him up with my ice axe leash, which is only about 2 feet long, and walked him the rest of the way down the mountain and back down the valley that way, which was kind of a pain.
Also, I seem to have injured the middle finger of my left hand, jammed it or something. I don’t know quite what, but it was definitely sore and swollen in the knuckle. Anyhow, a successful climb all in all.